The invention relates to an optical network, the transfer of a signal from a central station to subscriber stations taking place via of optical fibres, and the signal transferred by the central station being split, by a signal splitter in a splitting stage, into several output signals.
So far it has been customary, in the event of such networks not to go beyond one splitting stage which splits the signal into, e.g., 16 or 32 output signals. Further signal splitting would result in a low signal strength which would require sensitive, expensive optical receivers at the subscribers.